Professional Protest Stall on Police March

Space Hijacker | 24.01.2008 15:11 | Workers' Movements | London

Realising that the Police are far more used to being on the other side of protests, the Space Hijackers set up a stall at the Police March offering tips on protesting, free placards and even police issue anti F.I.T team face masks

The Professional Protest Stall

A suggestion for a placard for the Police

A re-working of the famous clenched fist logo

Advising the marchers on their rights as protesters

Police issue face masks

The Police have a lot of experience crushing protests, curtailing protesters rights and provoking confrontations in otherwise peaceful demos, however when it comes to actually protesting themselves, they are rank amateurs.

We decided to pass on some of our knowledge to the fledgling protesters, handing out leaflets on "Your rights as a protester" covering the relevant sections that the police were likely to use against themselves. Also an interesting sheet on "What to do if the police turn up" which asked them to remain calm in the face of possible police aggression and take down officers numbers.

We even had a song sheet with specially adapted protest songs:

"what do we want? - More Money"
"when do we want it? - Backdated from september 2007!"

"1234
money for the police force
5678
or we will not serve the state!"

plus our favourite

"No Justice, No Peace, We are the Police"

Our stall had a number of pre-made placards for them, and blank ones for them to fill out their own message. One policeman at the end shocked us by filling out a placard with "Love People, Hate Racism" which he then rejoined the march holding proudly. Perhaps they're not ALL bastards?

The FIT team eventually turned up and started documenting us for their database, this however gave us a great opportunity to show off our Police issue face masks. As we were being photographed our professional protesters advised the marchers 'Dear ladies and gentlemen, watch out for this lot, they will be putting you on their database of known subversives, try and cover your faces if you can" Amusingly this caused the FIT officers to scurry off quite quickly when the limelight was on them.

By the time the last of the marchers passed our stall we had handed out hundreds of leaflets and song sheets, wound up a fair few of the marching boys in blue and lost our voices from shouting too much.

more details on our site soon.

Space Hijacker
Homepage: http://www.spacehijackers.org

Additions

watcher

24.01.2008 19:50

But any idea who this character was - seen photographing the stall from across the other side & lingering around, with a "security" hi vis on & pager on belt??

watcher

RE. Watcher

25.01.2008 10:47

He is using a proffessional Canon camera. The Met Police have a huge deal with Nikon which is why their snappers both uniform and plain clothes are seen with Nikon gear. He is possibly an agency photographer though his face is not familiar.

Hmmmm

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

jesus

24.01.2008 17:44

I see the arts council funding is stretching to 2008

Police funding correction

24.01.2008 18:15

No, no. It is the taxpayer in general that funds the police, not the Arts Council.

We try each year to get funding for our FIT teams - creative photographers and new-media artists as they are.

But each year we get turned down and have to go cap in hand to the government once more!

On these Space Hijacker types - I hear you don't require funding to be imaginative - it's something that you've either got or you haven't. No amount of money can buy originality. We've tried offering them money to "creatively" go away but they won't accept it!

PC 2564

Although

24.01.2008 19:01

Making placards is a very common way of protesting, isn't it? People do it all the time without arts council funding, It's not very expensive and its worth spending a bit of money on something you believe in. Actually.

mishkin

brilliant,how about a Samba to liven this bunch up,revolutionary cop bloc needed

24.01.2008 22:22

Brilliant, any1 know any samba bands up for going on police demo's, hijackers & others at front of pollice march instead of the boring liberal mayor candidate & a sick bnp london councillor. people with pots & pans would have made it look better.

Police are just a professional militia,in spain during the civil war, anarchists had prisons for fascists painted with dadaist murals. Anarchism is true democracy by & for the people, a true definition includes government in hands of people with no class boundary.
The guy you mention at the end does look like he has the passion of the great walnut Shwarzenegger, maybe he is corporate prototype robot replacement for the police? seriously corporations are working on this.
Police have often joined revolutions, they do make a decent black block & if war computers programmed by hate do decide to takeover they would go for the police first in society, they need revolutionising.
Heres for doing sickies & workers strikes working with the police,

Revolutionary tea cop

oi monkey boy

25.01.2008 08:17

Stop talking fucking shit about anarchist spain and the cops, it is really pathetic.

more police funerals

anarchy is attractive

25.01.2008 09:54

Funny - cops on demos always seem to be boasting about how much money/overtime they are getting. Maybe a few bad investments have left em short...heh heh. Scumbags. Shame there were no violent arrests of coppers.

Shaw Taylor

Re: watcher

25.01.2008 14:33

The secret "watcher" on the picture is actually Papa Razzo, one of the spacehijackers, making trouble and disruption. He was great, and all the FIT team was pretty confused. Hehehehehehe...

Gelatin Agent

Policing the Police March.

06.02.2008 09:47

The march should have been policed by the NUM (members past and present) now that would have made for great entertainment.

KS1